The Bartender Questions: A Concession-Snack Home-Brewer with Political Regulars

At a bar with over 550 rotating beer labels, you serve lots of beer. What do you drink nowadays? Lots of big, hoppy beers.

If you had to pick one style of beer, what would it be? The one I'll go out of my way to procure beyond all others, is an authentic Belgian Lambic.

The best bars are ______ bars. Welcoming.

Louisville's known for mint juleps and Miami's known for mojitos. What is our nation's capital known for? Because of D.C.'s boom in culture and in food and drink, I think we've been great at absorbing trends and putting our own mark on it. I think D.C. is a fantastic kind of mish-mosh of American beverages. We have a great local beer scene, and we are among the best international beer scenes.

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Any recent drinking trends that surprise you? More and more women are drinking everything. Women consistently push the envelope on what they're drinking. We have regular female customers who are huge hopheads. And smoked beers are so polarizing, but I have female customers come in and drink smoked beers.

What drinking trend do you disapprove of? One of the other most frustrating things is going out to a bar and having to wait twenty minutes for a cocktail to be made. I just want a great drink that can be dispensed rather quickly.

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Beer before liquor... Is the proper course of action. In that order, but not mutually exclusive.

Do you have a drinking philosophy? Drinks are incredibly interesting, and I think that they are certainly as intellectually stimulating as they are viscerally.

Hangover cure? Drinking water while you're drinking and before bed. Otherwise, a ton of coffee and Tylenol.

Do you ever see politicians at the bar? We've had some. We try not to drop too many names here in D.C., but we actually have quite a few political regulars.

If you could grab a drink with any politician, who would it be and why? The obvious answer is President Obama because he's shown some interest in craft beer and brewing. Also, if Joe Biden drank, it would be awesome to drink with him, just because it seems like he'd be a great guy to have five or six beers with.

If the President asked you to recommend him a beer, which would you serve? I'm actually opening my own boutique brewery in May in D.C., called Bluejacket, and I've been doing a lot of collaboration beers with other breweries. I've already brewed my own beers, so I'd serve him whatever Bluejacket creation I have on tap.

What's one example? Snack Attack. It's an imperial porter brewed with crazy ingredients. What we wanted to do was make a beer reminiscent of cinematic concession-stand snacks, like a bucket of popcorn mixed in with candy. You have this cool interplay with the buttery, salted popcorn, and the chocolate, so that's what we set out to create.

What's the best thing about craft beer? Today there are over 2,500 craft brewers in the United States alone, and to have this modern renaissance of amazing craft beer and intense allegiance to these very special products is what I find to be the coolest thing.